Watched two hawks dive for squirrels outside the grad room window this afternoon. The sun was setting and the hawks were so big and beautiful they looked like white owls. The squirrel they were hunting made it, after fifteen minutes of incredible flips and turns and sprints. Those poor, beautiful birds are going to die of starvation. Although, I can't really blame them for being unable to catch an OSU squirrel--those fluffy-tailed monsters are demons here. They'll attack you if you get close to a trashcan. And they hiss and stuff, too. Some of them are huge. So having lovely predatory birds pick off a few is certainly no loss.

Did feel sorta sorry for the squirrel, though. 'Cept that he got away....

Several people stopped on the campus below me, watching the battle. It was funny: watching animals (humans) watching animals (hawks) watching animals (squirrelies). Until I realized that I was an animal watching animals watching animals watching animals. Then it wasn't quite so amusing anymore.

I read an article--the one I'm sure I've talked about before--that really bothered me. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me. My shrink told me to stop thinking about it, but that's like telling somebody to stop eating--it isn't possible. And the more I study pedagogy and psychology, the more it bothers me. We are all programmed to do the same things. We are ultimately all the same. We have survived because we are a social species, and everything we do feeds that trait. Why am I writing this? To get my ideas out. Why do we read? To gain ideas. It's through communication that we ensure the survival of the pack. But that bothers me. It also bothers me that everything is also connected to sex. Sex and communication. Is my sole purpose in life only to procreate? To keep the species alive? If so, for whatever reason, that bothers the hell out of me. It could be because that would mean that this is all meaningless. That we have no higher purpose. Or it could just be that I hate the foundation for having no greater meaning, when really it's supporting an entire building of great importance. Maybe these "tendencies" are simply a support structure that keeps us going, enables us to *have* higher purpose. And maybe I just solved my dilemma.

But I'm going to keep thinking about it, nonetheless.

Got honked at the other day. Walking to Bento's on Saturday, dressed in jeans, black leather boots, a black oversized jacket, with my hair slicked back in a braid, I had two guys who had just gotten out of the Taproot concert down the street comment on me.

"Extreme."

"That's what I'm talking about."

Hmm....I smiled inside, but it still sounded odd to me.

Well, time to go do more homework. No more thinking for today. Is everybody in the grad program here taking it easy this quarter except me?